


Ace: unbreakable principles

by Dark_Falcon



Category: One Piece
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Gen, Moral Philosophy, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-13 16:56:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16896426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Falcon/pseuds/Dark_Falcon
Summary: this essay is positively ancient and I could probably got into intellectual fisticuffs over it myself now.  It's not that I think what I've written is in accurate, but perhaps equally strong if not stronger interpretations could be made from other vantage points. Anyway I wanted to preserve this artifact of my past reflections, and since this essay had been posted on tumblr, and tumblr does not seem reliable any more, I'm posting it here.





	Ace: unbreakable principles

**Author's Note:**

> this essay is positively ancient and I could probably got into intellectual fisticuffs over it myself now. It's not that I think what I've written is in accurate, but perhaps equally strong if not stronger interpretations could be made from other vantage points. Anyway I wanted to preserve this artifact of my past reflections, and since this essay had been posted on tumblr, and tumblr does not seem reliable any more, I'm posting it here.

this is one of the reasons why I like Ace so much. I really like how he makes moral choices. I also really like this situation, because Ace was doing the right thing here, but despite that it ended pretty badly for him and other people involved. I’m going to reconstruct what was going on here.

When Teach murdered a crew mate he essentially did two things: he betrayed and undermined the trust AND he violated consensus of the crew. Neither of those things could go simply unaddressed.

In the long run letting Blackbeard of the hook wouldn’t be good for trust among the crew. Trust is something have to care for - it would weaken if you don’t do that. If the trust had been injured some amends have to be made. You can’t allow that to fester. Now trust is crucial for pirate crew. Without it crew would crumble. That’s why the duty of punishing traitor has to be fulfilled. That’s why Ace had to bring back trust, which would not be possible if had he let the traitor go.

Teach violated the rule everyone in the crew agreed on. More than agreed - consented. That means he himself accepted that rule as valid. And than he went and breached it. What Ace tried to do was not to let the dignity of crews will become tarnished, as it would if people started to go against this will again and again. Ace is the one who protects integrity and inner dignity of the crew.

It may be misleading since Ace is portrayed as the emotional and angry here, while Whitebeard and other pirates seem relatively calmer, but Ace wasn’t the overwhelmed by emotions, on the contrary, he remains rational and gives arguments for his stance. On the other hand Whitebeard got overwhelmed by his emotions - in his case fear for his son’s safety. Note two things: there are no arguments given why Ace shouldn’t go on the chases (except “I have a bad feeling about this”, which in this case can’t be treated as rational argument), moreover Ace wasn’t ordered to stay, he was released from his duty and advised against going, but not ordered to stay. Actually I doubt Whitebeard could order Ace that, no matter how much he wished for Ace to stay. He couldn’t have give an order against his own will and consensus of his crew(it would help if you know distinction between will and something that German philosophers call “willkür”, which can maybe be referred as a “whim”). There also stands a fact, that Ace was explicitly promised to retain his freedom when he had become Whitebeard’s son, so Whitebeard can’t actually force Ace to do something against his (Ace’s) will.

I’d say Ace was by this point really irritated and frustrated with people trying to persuade him to abandon his duties. The consensus of the crew regarding killing and punishment hadn’t changed. Instead they told Ace, that they are making an exception. Which is of course objectionable. They pretty much told him to act against previously established and communicated consensus, basically on a whim. Worse, Whitebeard, person Ace holds in very high regard (and proponent of the rule) asked him to stay. By this point Ace must have felt at least little bit betrayed. Of course, later, much later when everything went to hell and Ace started to doubt his judgement Whitebeard admitted Ace was right all along.

I would rule away the accusation, that Ace simply got blinded by rage and it was the only thing, that directed his actions. Anger is in fact very appropriate emotional response to the facts that had occurred. And emotions should not be opposed rational thinking. After all emotions are important factors in setting preferences. It isn’t like Ace stopped thinking when he got angry. He generally doesn’t do that, he is well aware of his reasons and directs his actions according to principles, he usually don’t get less important considerations gets in the way of fulfilling more important ones, even if the less important issues are closer at hand (this is what sometimes make him seem like a rash person - he is not, he is just very consistent with reason over common sense approach. By this point it is worth mentioning that rational thinking is rather higher track that common sense thinking, but neither guarantees success when turned into action. Also from the point of view of common sense rationality may as well look like madness, especially non-instrumental rationality).

By this point in time there was no real reason to suspect that Ace’s mission would go wrong (and certainly not this wrong). After all no one knew Blackbeard posses the power of yami yami no mi, which turned out to be key factor in their fight, or that he desires Shichibukai position. On the other hand anxiety after betrayal and death of on of the commanders is understandable and explains why they didn’t want Ace to go.

It is really not the case in which Ace got stubborn and hotheaded and went against all the arguments. It’s just there are no possible rational arguments in this case saying Ace shouldn’t have go after Teach. Only part that could have been negotiated was whether he would go alone or if there should be someone to help him.

Essentially Ace had correctly recognized consensus of the crew and acted accordingly, which was asserted, when the crew came for him to Marineford.

Additional reason why Ace couldn’t abandon his chase, was that he would forever regret it. He would regret it, as he already recognized hunting down Teach as his moral duty and responsibility towards the crew.

Any way consequences of Ace neglecting his duties would be most likely very grim for Ace - namely Blackbeard would go after Luffy (just imagine amount of regret Ace would feel about that).

Allow me to make commentary to this post. I would like to deepen the understanding of the view presented above (as no one seems to be willing to respond to me).

Consensus of the crew is the commonly formed will of the crew. Realization of the will of the crew is realization of their collective freedom. The duty and responsibility to realize the will of the crew falls in this case on Ace.

What is this will and whim distinction? Well imagine situation in which you want to be a great artist or sportsperson. This is your will. Realization of your freedom would be fulfilling this will. Living freely would be living in a way that will allow you to realize this will. But you also want to stay in bed all day, watch your favorite tv series or stay all time on tumblr. This is your whim. Of course you need brakes from time to time, so following the whim from time to time would actually help you with realization of your will (having free life). But if you follow your whim every day or in the majority of days, you would be subjected to your own whims. In that case you would not be free. Now there is a possibility, that you would never accomplish your goal of being great artist or great sportsperson, but if you would work to accomplish it your actions would still be free. Your own action would secure your freedom in that sense. But if you subject yourself to your whims you would lose your freedom and the possibility to fulfill your dream to be great artist or sports person.

Other example - parent child relations. If your parent wants you to grow, your parent has this will, your parent cannot make decisions for you. Your parent may have desire, the whim, to make decisions for you, and indeed those may be better decisions, that you could make yourself. You cannot subject yourself to your parent whim to control your for your own good (at least when you are an adult, and note that the whim here is the desire to control, not the particular decisions). In turn your parent cannot live freely as a parent if they subject themselves to their whim to make decisions for you.

If you have a group of people and they arrived on consensus at something and they established the rule for themselves they act in a free way when they follow their own rule (or rules). The rule is legitimized by the consensus of the free people, who willed it. Respecting such a rule is realization of collective freedom. If you consented on the rule you do not give up your freedom when you follow it.

So even if you get a better idea about what the rules should be you still follow the previous consensus, until you are able to establish a new one. In situation, where even 99% agrees on something, but the consensus about something has not been establish following those 99% is following the whim of majority, submitting to power of the majority and such situation cannot be described as realization of the freedom. This is the case of dictatorship of the majority, that can endanger or harm minority. Of course for various reasons people rarely arrive at consensuses.

This last part is not so important, as Whiteberd Pirates in that situation, were not trying to establish a new consensus, they were trying to make an exception from the one they had. Which means, they were giving up something of their freedom, for a whim.

Ace has a duty, he can’t be released by the act of a whim. This is the highest consensus this crew had at that point. If they had higher (more important) consensus, they could argument from higher consensus. They had not (they also have not proposed other possible ways of resolving the situation). Fulfillment of the duty is realization of the freedom in this case and Ace lives by principle of freedom.

If Ace wants freedom, than appropriate, rational course of action is to follow the will and in this case it is to fulfill the duty. With following the will, the consensus in this case, and not accidental whim Ace gains (or protects) the freedom. Regardless what the consequences of this action were Ace got what he desired the most and got this by acting in a certain way and not by obtaining something. That’s why Ace can’t rationally follow the whim.

Have I made this any clearer?

That’s why this story is a tragedy. For the story to be a tragedy a character need to make a decision, that “right” one in some very important sense and still be doomed to a disaster (or at least to opposite outcome than desired one). If a character is a dumbass, makes a laps of judgement by making the decision or is incapable of making decisions and acts randomly or instinctively, and that’s what leads to their doom we don’t have a tragedy we have a satire.


End file.
